Is there a gene for long life?
Boston-based group Sebastiani et al say they've found not one but two, in RNA Editing Genes Associated with Extreme Old Age in Humans and with Lifespan in C. elegans.
They took 4 groups of "oldest old" people: from New England, Italy, and Japan, and American Ashkenazi Jews. All were aged 90 or more, and many of them were 100, centenarians. As control groups, they used random healthy people who weren't especially old. The total sample size was an impressive 2105 old vs. 3044 controls.
On the basis of a pilot study, they chose to look at two candidate genes, ADARB1 and ADARB2. Both are involved in post-transcriptional RNA editing, one of the steps in the process by which genetic material, DNA, controls protein synthesis. It's something every cell in the body needs to do in order to function.
What happened? Their abstract makes ...
